2011-02-28

When attempting a Wonderland story of any type, the greatest challenge is making it sufficiently nonsensical without alienating the audience. Carroll did this by having a nonnative to Wonderland tell the story. Burton avoided the question by changing the name of the place to Underland and making everyone down to the Mad Hatter sensible. Kovac and Liew, to their credit, don't avoid the question like last year's blanken film did, but neither do they introduce a character from the Real World. This is a tricky line to walk, but they attempt it by making their Wonderlandian protagonist obsessively sensible. She's still crazy like any good Wonderlandian, but she finds her craziness in her sensibility. Rather brilliant solution, really.

This protag is Mary Ann, the White Rabbit's never-seen maid that Alice was mistaken for in the original book. She cleans everything and that helps keep the story on a proper Wonderland tilt.

Most of the time.

Occasionally, the book forgets how to be wacky and crazy and nonsensical and curious, and, at the end, Mary Ann even loses her obsessiveness. Which I did not like. I don't like that character development was deemed to require that Mary Ann give up, in large measure, the very traits that made her a citizen of her native land.

So this was a good book --- one of the best Alice spinoffs I've read --- but imperfect.

The art's fun the writing's fine; if you're a fan, pick it up. I suppose.

About the time this goes live, I will be reading this live. Hope there's exactly eight minutes and thirty-nine seconds left when I stand up. Otherwise I may have to walk to the front of the room reeeelly slowly.

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Lehi taught his children that Adam fell so we might be and we are that we might have joy. Long before Lehi, Enoch taught that, “Because . . . Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe.” On the surface, these teachings sound rather opposite. On the one hand, because of the Fall we might have joy. On the other hand, because of the Fall we are made partakers of misery and woe. Is Lehi trying to cheer us up? Is Enoch just a big downer? How can both these teachings be true?

Happily, both Enoch and Lehi explain this seeming contradiction.

Lehi said fourteen verses before we-might-have-joy that “it must needs be . . . there is an opposition in all things.” But why? Why do we need opposition? Because without it, “righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. . . . all things must needs be a compound in one” including, he goes on to point out, “happiness [and] misery”.

Enoch meanwhile gives us the same explanation God gave Adam: “. . . when [thy children] begin to grow up,” said God, “sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.”

See how that works? Until sin has sullied us, we cannot know the joy of being clean!

As my friend Redoubt once wrote, “[We] can’t just say that we’re here to have joy. That’s only half the equation. . . . Unhappiness is real, it breathes in our cities, it permeates our lives, and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, [we] can’t pretend it’s not there just because [we] don’t want it.”

I think it’s telling though that both of these scriptures that tell us what we’re supposed to do in our life, joy or misery, reference the Fall of Adam and Eve. They had it pretty chill there in Eden with fruit on the trees and comfy moss to nap in. But they couldn’t stay. They had to leave. As Eve realized, “Were it not for [their] transgression [they] . . . never should have known good and evil, and the joy of [their] redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”

Staying in paradise-slash-innocence—or even desiring a simple return to paradise-slash-innocence —is antithetical to our divine instructions.
Consider Joseph Smith languishing in a jail so small he can’t stand up. What comfort is he given? “if the very jaws of hell . . . gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”

Terrific.

From Redoubt again: “You might be born blind, not because you sinned, not because your parents sinned, but for no reason at all. It’s mortality. It’s not fair. It’s not roses and moonlight and happy songs and sweet wine. It’s life, and it sucks.”

Which is my roundabout way of saying Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy.

Keep in mind what God told Moses, that his “work and [his] glory [is] to bring to pass [our] . . . immortality and eternal life”. That endgoal thinking is part of the joy equation. Mormon says when we arrive at eternal life we will “dwell in the presence of God in his kingdom . . . in a state of happiness which hath no end.”

So now let’s return to Enoch who, remember, is the one who told us we’re to spend our days in misery and woe. At the end of his life, he was living in the city of Zion where he “and all his people walked with God . . . [who] dwelt in [their] midst . . . and . . . God received [them] up into his own bosom”.

Which is the goal, yes? To return to God? “To dwell in the presence of God . . . in a state of happiness which hath no end”? We are that we might have joy and, if I’m understanding all this correctly, when that day of pure uninterrupted joy finally commences, it will be when we walk with God. When we walk with God. Plural. Like Zion did.

President Eyring talked about this notion of saintly plurality a couple years ago in General Conference:

The miracle of unity is being granted to us as we pray and work for it in the Lord’s way. . . . God has promised that blessing [of unity] to His faithful Saints whatever their differences in background and whatever conflict rages around them. He was praying for us . . . when He asked His Father that we might be one [as he and his Father art one].

The reason that we pray and ask for that blessing is the same reason the Father is granting it. We know from experience that joy comes when we are blessed with unity. We yearn, as spirit children of our Heavenly Father, for that joy which we once had with Him in the life before this one. . . .

[But] He cannot grant it to us as individuals. The joy of unity He wants so much to give us is not solitary. We must seek it and qualify for it with others. . . . God urges us to gather so that He can bless us. He wants us to gather into families. He has established classes, wards, and branches and commanded us to meet together often. In those gatherings, which God has designed for us, lies our great opportunity. We can pray and work for the unity that will bring us joy and multiply our power to serve. . . .

The Lord has given us guides to know what to do to receive the blessing and joy of ever-increasing unity. The Book of Mormon recounts a time of success . . . in the days of Alma. . . .

Everything Alma and his people were inspired to do was pointed at helping [them] choose to have their hearts changed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. That is the only way God can grant the blessing of being of one heart.

“And they were called the church of God, or the church of Christ, from that time forward. And it came to pass that whosoever was baptized by the power and authority of God was added to his church. . . .

“And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

“. . . . And thus they became the children of God.”

The children of God.

Until we recognize both our identity as children of God and our potential as children of God, our quest for joy will be hindered. As it will be should we fail to recognize that every person sitting right here right now—and every person not ever here—is also a child of God with all the potential that implies. We were sent here to support each other, to share and spread the joys and miseries of life.

King Benjamin says that we “should consider . . . the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For . . . they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness.” And King Benjamin is right. But we can’t misunderstand him and suppose that that state of never-ending happiness will arrive before we are faithful to the end and received into heaven to dwell with God. First things first, and this life is first. Remember, these words come from the same King Benjamin who said we start out as “[enemies] to God . . . and will be, forever and ever, unless [we yield] to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and . . . [become saints] through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and [become as children], . . . willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon” us. And I don’t know about you, but “inflict” doesn’t sound like it’s hinting at an inherently joyful process, end result notwithstanding.

But now we’re getting to useful stuff. Like how do help each other in this process? How does one child of God help another child of God make it through our miserable messed-up lives that we might have joy?

Maybe the first step is to remember that we’re not competing against each other. Nephi asks “Hath [the Lord] commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? . . . Nay; but he hath given it free for all men. . . . [Hath] the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness? . . . Nay; but all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden.”

Elder Holland writes that God “loves each of us—insecurities, anxieties, self-image, and all. He doesn’t measure our talents or our looks; He doesn’t measure our professions or our possessions. He cheers on every runner, calling out that the race is against sin, not against each other.”
And so can we. We too can cheer on each other, support each other, love each other, find joy in each other’s joys just as we mourn with those who mourn. Life isn’t always pretty. It’s complicated and convoluted and confusing and much of the time it’s a big mess.

We are, as Enoch said, made partakers of misery and woe. But we are also, as Lehi said, that we might have joy.

All of us will suffer. Therefore all of us will have joy. And I, with Nephi, “pray the Father in the name of Christ that [we] may be saved in his kingdom at that great and last day”, “in a state of happiness which hath no end.”

2011-02-26

I've been thinking about playing the Oscar-picks game but I couldn't get excited about it until JUST NOW when Katya emailed me a link to a new sort of Oscar picks game. Which I love. It's just my kind of needlessly complex game.

Movie bloggers Eric and Jeff are doing it as a contest betwixt themselves, but I really think they're missing out by not having posted earlier and making the game public. But I'm making a list anyway just to see how I do against the pros. Here are the rules as borrowed from Eric:

Here’s how it works: First you make your predictions for each of the 24 categories. Then you arrange them in order of how confident you are that you’re right. The one you’re most certain of will be worth 24 points if it actually wins; the one you were totally taking a wild guess on gets 1 point if it happens to prove correct. Whoever has the most points at the end of the show is the winner.

2011-02-22

I've been "reading" this book for about eight years now, maybe more maybe less, but I haven't read a word for probably six of those years. It's been sitting on my nightstand all those years, but I haven't even cracked it. I'm on page 128 of 352 and will be forever. I'm officially leaving this book closed. I'll be selling it to a used-book store in about 45 minutes.

The idea behind the book is thrilling. American guy sneaks into Hitler's Europe and through his intellectual swashbucklery rescues artists and academics targeted by the Nazi regime. Exciting!, right?

Yeah, I guess. I don't really remember if it was exciting or not.

The only sticking impression is of the author Andy Marino's attitude toward this adventure. Marino is chilling and he presents the "hero" Fry in his own image. Which is to say, in the laws of life presented by this book, as true as gravity-pulls-down or Nazism-is-bad, you as reader as expected to accept the fact that an artist's life is worth more than tens of thousands of other people's lives.

This is what I found so chilling, so unsettling, so wrong.

I can find noble reasons to save André Breton and Max Ernst, but to suggest they deserve to be saved because their lives are inherently more valuable than a peasant woman's are where I will have to disagree. As an artists who associates with artists, I will readily admit that we have high opinions of ourselves, but the second we start thinking our actual lives matter more than other lives is the second our megalomania becomes dangerous.

Art is for everyone who lives and all those lives are equally valuable and it is not for the artist or the connosier to decide who is worthy to live and who might as well die. Yet that's what this book suggests. Varian Fry was rich and appreciated good art and writing and so he could decide who should live and who should die. Perhaps he was a more complicated character than that, but to Marino, that's enough. He is incapable of questioning his premise that artists' lives are worth more and that's what makes it impossible for me to finish this book.

2011-02-19

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We spent last night with the Brass Clan who have no wifi and whose neighbors wifi is now password protected. (Remember when the wifi default was nonsecured and you could pull over in any residential neighborhood and check your email or hack the FBI? Ah, the good old days.) So I had no internet last night. Which meant I couldn't work on my prioritized projects. I was stuck with the projects on my laptop. So I read a great screenplay I'd had sitting around for about six months and rewrote a novella that had been waiting in purgatory for over two years. I'm pretty stoked. Sure, the "urgent" things didn't get done, but how awesome to get done what I did. I'm feeling good.

2011-02-16

Since we got him real tieable ties, the Big O has worn a tie to school every single day (Feb 6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15). Today he's switching back to his A's jersey, but he tells me he'll be wearing ties every Monday-Tuesday-Thursday from now on.

2011-02-15

Now I'm remembering why I originally went with FIVE books at a time. All these broken-up book posts are overwhelming Thutopia. Last year I finished so few I forgot how overwhelming book writeups can get. This year I'm already on track to over double last year's numbers! Hhhhh.

I don't know how I feel about this book. At times I was audibly groaning and rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath at the annoying games it was playing. Then it would gain my respect by not screwing me as badly as I expected. It over-relied on the character's dialectical quicks and only about 80% of the gimmicks it employed worked. It plays some Upton Sinclair games, but it's never so obvious that you end up feeling preached to.

Simply, this is a good book in most respects, with plenty more very good elements than irritating elements. A book I would expect most readers to love and towards which specific complaints are difficult to articulate. A book that lets me say both this is a writer to watch and a writer I wouldn't go out of my way to read again. (Though if you disagree, there's his first book and his columns.)

Here's the story: a Nigerian refugee and a British woman, due to a shared horror, come together and bounce around for a couple hundred pages.

It was the book chosen for the high school's parent/student/teacher book club which is how I came to read it. Maybe I'll say more after tonight. Maybe not. I now understand why the cover said nothing.

I've been saying I'm done with Steinbeck. That someday I would read Travels with Charley and, since Lady Steed loves it so much, perhaps East of Eden, but unless I loved them, I was done. I was sick of his cheap violent endings and unless those two books --- which I figured had good odds of not matching what I had read before --- broke the trend, I was writing Steinbeck off forever.

Well I'm pleased to announce that Travels with Charley has been a terrific read.

Travels is the nonfiction yarn of an aging Steinbeck taking his dog and a truck with a camper on the back and hitting the roads c. 1960. He wants to reintroduce himself to America, to gain a fresh sense of this land he writes about. He starts by heading north into Maine, then back down and over over over till he arrives in the Pacific Northwest. Down to his hometown, then down through the Mojave, Texasward, to New Orleans than back north and home. Along the way, he draws a fascinating and tactile vision of America fifty years ago.

The most powerful section is at the end. He heads to the South because, at this moment in time, this is where History is happening. And the emotional impact contained in the few pages he spends on the South's turmoil is devastating and hopeful all at the same time. Marvelous stuff. I'ld like to share it with my classes.

Another even briefer scene that I hope has been anthologized in books of animal tales, is the run-in with a bear in Yellowstone. Classic stuff.

But all in all, it's just this look at a lost America that I love the most. I see things I recognize from my Idaho childhood, but things now lost forever --- bits of the American experience and the American character my kids will never know.

I'm grateful Steinbeck captured it for us.

(I began underlining passages to share early in my reading [page 38], but in the end, there are just too many to type up. I'm afraid you'll just have to read it yourself.)

I helped out early on this book's Kickstarter, fully expecting that it, like all other Kickstarter projects I've backed, would fail to meet its goal. Boy was I wrong. In the end, $36,017 were pledged towards its $2,500 goal. So my $27.27 disappeared and just before the new year, I got a beautiful book in the mail.

And I do mean beautiful. Given Bastian's intricate style, a single page requires hours of attention to puzzle out its details. Chris Ware says it takes a thousand times longer to make comics compared to reading them. With Bastian it could very well be ten thousand times.

But given my attention to line, I am not, at the end of my first reading, really very sure if the story is any good. Claims are noised about that this is the new Alice in Wonderland (a claim that gets thrown out every few years --- remember when they were saying it about Coraline?) and I get the comparison (more than I did for Coraline, actually), but besides being able to admit this is a fantastic absurd adventure, I can't comment on its overall quality. But I'm pretty sure it was good.

The art, at least, is worth the price of entry..

I was thinking about super-hi-rez-scanning a page in then giving you zoomins deeper and deeper, but it ends up I'm too lazy. So instead here's a picture from Cursed Pirate Girl I found online (click for source, a review of part of what I read pre-collected version):

2011-02-14

It's Valentine's Day, and you know what that means! Time for a massacre! It's 2011 so I think we should use something cool like lasers or something to do the killing, but I'm not really picky. We just need to find some unarmed annoying people and we'll be set. How's 5 sound to you. Great? Great! See you then!

2011-02-08

Hey! Hey, future! What the heck, future? Is this your idea of a joke? Well no one thinks it's funny, future. Nobody. Not a soul. Not anybody, not even your mother. So what's next, future? More of the same old crap or are you gonna try and step it up for once? Maybe do something worth our time and all the bother we're sinking into you?

2011-02-04

I wandered lonely as a sasquatch
Staggering through rainy vales and hills,
Simply in quest for a game of hopscotch
Simply in search of innocent thrills
Simply in search of the simple pastimes
Pastimes left lost in life's younger climes.

2011-02-02

I've had a source for free books and for a while there I was picking up chapter books I thought might interest the kids when they get older. I stopped though when I realized I was a) getting too many and b) we might move before they're able to read them.

But the Big O has had some serious breakthroughs in reading the last few weeks and now he's found this shelf and he's been taking books off it and piling them up. He's still too slow to speed through them, but he loves that they're there and that he found them and I think that's awesome.